Cemetery Junction
Posted by admin | Posted in Movies | Posted on 19-08-2010
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Product Description
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 08/17/2010 Run time: 95 minutes Rating: RAmazon.com
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the duo behind the BBC’s Office, travel back to 1973 for this serio-comic coming-of-age story. Inspired by Gervais’s Reading hometown, Cemetery Junction is the type of small-minded burg Freddie Taylor (Christian Cooke, likable and attractive) longs to escape. Fortunately, he receives a job offer from Mr. Kendrick (a smarmy… More >>
I saw this movie in a theatre in London in April. By British standards, this is one of the greatest films to come out of that country. As for any America who is weary of British movie quality, like myself, this is honestly one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. If you are at all familiar with the works of Ricky Gervais, then you can only expect some of the best entertainment. This movie is deep, it’s moving. Ricky Gervais tends to do comedies, but this movie really shows his talent as a director and actor. I don’t want to sound like a cliche, but this movie really did make me laugh and cry. My friends and I talked about this movie for days.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a rather charming coming of age movie charting the escapades of three loveable rogues, The Nerd, Bad-boy and the Buffoon. The 1970′s are wonderfully recreated here, and reminds me somewhat of my youth, its well acted and keeps an slight emotional pull and a constant flow of smiles and chuckles rather than huge laughs. Its.. well, its just very well acted, made and written, without pulling up any trees, its just .. nice. I have no idea how this will translate to American audiences, but erm, did I mention its nice-ness
Rating: 4 / 5
It’s 1973 and three young small-town Brits look into their dreams for the future and see very different things. Snork, the dork, would be blissfully happy if only he could (a) find a girl to love him and then (b) someday rise to the rank of Station Master of the Cemetery Junction railway station. Bruce is too consumed with anger to care about love, career or happiness; he just wants to hop a train and get as far away as he can from the dad he’s never forgiven for letting his mom get away all those years ago. And then there’s Freddie. What Freddie wants most fervently is to not end up like his dad (Gervais), sleepwalking his life away in a dead-end job at the local whatzit factory with nothing to show for it. At first Freddie thinks the answer is putting on a suit and tie and following in the footsteps of his new mentor, (Ralph Fiennes), who escaped Cemetery Junction years ago to run a life insurance agency and now lives high off the hog. But, for the moment at least, dreams are taking these three lovable clods exactly nowhere–it’s just joyless workdays, then a pub crawl, usually followed by a bar fight, followed by release from jail the next morning, and perchance a friendly reminder from dear old Granny that “you’ll never amount to anything,” just in time to start the whole cycle over again.
Until fate intervenes.
For Snork, salvation arrives with a skirt on; for Bruce, it’s an intervention by a wise old town cop; and for Freddie, it’s an encounter with a sad widow that causes the scales to start dropping off.
The three young stars–Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes and Jack Doolan–are all terrific–as are Felicity Jones (who starred in “Northanger Abbey”) as the little girl with big dreams Freddie has loved since he was 12 and the brilliant Emily Watson as her beleaguered mom. Matthew Goode makes a pretty good bad guy. Lovely story, well cast, well told and highly recommended.
Rating: 4 / 5
Actor/director Ricky Gervais returns to the director’s scene alongside longtime friend/writer Stephen Merchant (both who have previously worked in BBC’s “The Office”) in a coming-of-age story of three British teens in 1973 and inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s song “Thunder Road”.
VIDEO:
“Cemetery Junction” is presented in 1080p High Definition (2:40:1). Picture quality is well-done as detail of the 70s exteriors are well-captured. I will say that the overall look of the film and Gervais and Merchant explain their goal in achieving the ’70s look and growing up in Reading. Certain scenes show off a lot of color, from Freddie’s blue shirt or blue eyes to the reds that are seen during the dance sequence. Granted, I do feel that the dance sequence seems more modern than 1973 but that was probably my own personal quirk.
The film definitely looks great on Blu-ray, although there is one scene taken place when Freddie and Julie are in her film developing room in which there seems to be some experimentation on video and it seemed as if there was globs of artifacting but I think that it was more of a psychedelic experiment with red lighting and filtering. But that was probably the only scene that caught my attention and made me wonder if there were problems video-wise.
Blacks are nice and deep in certain scenes and for the most part, picture quality is well-done.
AUDIO & SUBTITLES:
“Cemetery Junction” is presented in English and French 5.1 DTS-HD MA and in English-Audio Description Track 5.1 Dolby Digital. The film is primarily dialogue driven but there are some parts, such as the factory in which your room is enveloped by the sound of machinery and the LFE and surround channels are kicked up a notch. But aside from that primary scene, the film is center and front channel driven and what shines about “Cemetery Junction” is its soundtrack which features music by Elton John, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, Roxy Music and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“Cemetery Junction” comes with the following special features in high definition, English 2.0 and subtitles in English:
* Commentary with Writers/Directors Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant – Audio commentary by both directors Gervais and Merchant with optional English subtitles. Gervais and Merchant talk about the film and also explain how they wanted to capture the 1973 and how, outside of London, these areas were not 1973-definitive since towns still looked as if they were several years behind.
* Cast Commentary with Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes, and Jack Doolan – Featuring the audio of the three main characters of the film. The commentary features optional English subtitles. The cast talk about their experiences while shooting the film.
* Deleted Scenes – (13:38) Featuring ten deleted scenes.
* Blooper Reel – (13:42) Featuring outtakes from “Cemetery Junction”.
* The Directors: A Conversation with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant – (15:07) Both Gervais and Merchant talking about how they wanted to make a serious feel-good coming-of-age drama.
* The Lads Look Back: The Stars Discuss Cemetery Junction – (10:14) Tom Hughes, Christian Cooke and Jack Doolan talk about the auditions, being cast on the film and working on “Cemetery Junction”.
* Seventies Style: Production and Costume Design – (8:44) The cast talk about the ’70s look and what went into the production and costume design for the film. Production designer Anna Higginson talks about what she wanted to capture for the homes of the main characters, while costume designer Ruth Myers.
* Production Featurette – (6:45) Featuring three production featurettes: The Start of Filming, Week 1, Meet The Boys and The Directors On Set.
* movieIQ+sync (logo) and BD-Live connect you to real-time information on the cast, music, trivia and more while watching the movie!
JUDGMENT CALL:
“Cemetery Junction” is a film that carries on the banality of young adult life in your usual coming-of-age type of film but a definite step-up for Ricky Gervais from his previous directorial stint in “The Invention of Lying”. Both Gervais and co-director Stephen Merchant were able to come up with a pretty fun, stylish film that doesn’t come anywhere near any gag-driven type of comedy films that Gervais is known for but the two men were able to come up with a heartfelt coming-of-age film.
For the most part, the friendships between the Freddie, Bruce and Snork is quite fun to watch and and like most teen coming-of-age films, you know there is trouble to be had for these young men. As the film takes place in the ’70s, the problem that I have is these both Freddie and Bruce look like they come out of a GQ magazine than two young men who grew up in a town in which their family are not the best in their financial situation. You would like to think that these young adults who have pretty much have gotten themselves quite a bit of trouble had challenging upbringings but I felt the casting for a few of the characters were just too good to be believed.
I actually did question the films timeline of taking place in 1973 but according to Gervais and Merchant, in the small towns outside of London, despite the time period of 1973, many towns were behind a few years in terms of overall decor and aesthetics. So, they wanted to have an early ’70s look but not overly emphasizing the ’70s in general. But I will definitely give the film credit for its cool soundtrack!
But the film’s structure is simple and in many ways, there are no surprises. Personally, I was welcoming some sort of tragedy to fall upon one of the friends, or possibly the two best friends having enough of each other and getting into a brawl but I suppose that would be too much of a cliche.
But I felt the chemistry of the three friends worked quite well onscreen. Both Cooke and Hughes are obviously standouts in their role and Jack Doolan is like the UK version of Jack Black or Jonah Hill. And the cast does benefit with veteran talent courtesy of the performances by Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, Steve Speirs and Francis Magee.
The Blu-ray release of “Cemetery Junction” does come with its fair share of special features and the addition of two audio commentary, one for the directors and the other with the three main cast members was a nice addition.
Overall, “Cemetery Junction” is a fun, entertaining and heartfelt film. The story doesn’t strive to be anything great, nor does strive to be anything else but just a usual coming-of-age film. There is no significant climax, it’s just a group of friends growing up, getting in trouble, having fun and moving on. Nothing more, nothing less. And because of that, the film is just average. But I do welcome Ricky Gervais trying something different and not becoming a director who gets pigeon-holed for only comedy-based films.
Nevertheless, “Cemetery Junction” shows us that Gervais and Merchant work quite well with each other, granted I’m not expecting them to be the next Powell or Pressburger but perhaps their next collaboration will be bring us something much more ambitious, compelling and entertaining.
Rating: 4 / 5